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The Director of Sports, Ebonyi State Ministry of Youth and Sports, Dr. Emmanuel Utobo, has assured the state’s teaming supporters that more medals will be won by its contingent to the 18th National Sports Festival tagged, ‘Eko 2012’. Utobo spoke after watching Chika Amalaka win three gold medals in the 54 kg class of the weightlifting female event. A highly elated Utobo said said the result was dividend of long term planning and returning to the grassroots to discover hidden talents. He said: “This did not come to me as a surprise because. “We worked for it and the result is there for all to see. “After the ‘Garden City Games 2011’, our governor mandated us to go back to the grassroots and that we did which is now yielding these results. “I can’t say how many more medals we will annex before the end of the games, but I am very sure that in the next two days, more medals will be added to three gold medals and one silver that we already have from weightlifting and wrestling. “It is one thing to get an instruction and it is quite another to carry out that instruction. “Our governor instructed and we carried out the instructions, which led to this huge success that we are recording here in Lagos.” Utobo won a lot of medals in his active days as a weightlifter. Amalaka, weighing 51.8kg, picked three gold medals in the female weightlifting event of the games, with a total lift of 189kg accruing from 86kg snatch and 103kg clean and jerk inside the Brai Ayenote Boxing Gymnasium at the National Stadium, Lagos. After five days of competition, Ebonyi State occupies the fifth position on the medals table with three gold and one silver medal.